


History is a Story Told

by EstaJay



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bookworm!Warriors, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Warriors (Linked Universe)-centric, pre-LU, storyteller!Warriors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28999026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EstaJay/pseuds/EstaJay
Summary: The tales of past heroes have been told and retold across the kingdom. It was inevitable that they would one day reach the ears of the next hero incarnate - one who has the urge to take up the pen himself.OrIn which Legend is Warriors' Original Character Do Not Steal
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	History is a Story Told

**Author's Note:**

> organizing my drive and was surprised to find something that was actually complete among all the WIPs  
> yes pre-LU means this just takes place before and during HW but Legend specifically gets mentioned and that pink-haired amalgamation is specific to LU so yeah

It starts with a bard visiting a small village.

Bards are entertainers, their job is to amuse. In towns and cities, they find their place in theatres and street corners and central squares where they are free to indulge in their craft all day with the chance that someone passing by might spare them a coin for them to eat and live and to perform another day.

They have no place in rural villages, not a permanent one. A bard is welcomed during feast days, where their skill in the arts takes centre stage and they have all the glory of kings. But a bard does not weave nor not bake, does not till fields nor forge steel. They are not productive in the way rural life demands. They are nothing more than an extra mouth to feed that does not contribute to the community's survival.

Worse, they are a foreign face. Should even the slightest bit of misfortune befall the village, it is the bard - the stranger, the outsider - who takes the blame. They must flee lest a more terrible fate befall them at the hands of the enraged villagers.

In the countryside, a bard is a passing wind - sweeping into a village for a couple days and entertaining the children with their stories and songs before blowing away. They leave behind fleeting memories to be forgotten in the monotonous working days. Sometimes, they leave behind something more permanent - in those case, the bard deserves whatever the village has planned.

A bard visits a village and he expects it to be like any other. During the evening, he plays songs at the local inn to earn his bed and board. During the morning, he sits in the village square surrounded by children with wary parents watching from the distance.

He tells his stories, his collection of tales gathered from years on the road. He tells of the one-feathered bird who coveted the more feathered tails of other birds, of the hare who grew overconfident and a race to a tortoise, of the tricky spider who won the gift of stories from the goddess of secrets herself. To the older ones, he has more exciting tales to tell. A pair of warriors who pretended to be brides to retrieve a stolen hammer. A woman so beautiful that her kidnapping sparked a decades long war. A boy with wings of feathers and wax who flew too close to the sun.

His young audience is thoroughly entertained and the adults have yet to light their pitchforks. He has been a bard for many years and a traveler for twice as long, he knows when he has overstayed his welcome.

But in this particular village, there is a child. Wide-eyed and curious who has tailed the bard since he first started spinning his tales. Were it not for the child's mother, the bard was sure the child would have been on his tail from sunrise to sunset to sunrise again. He had little followers in the past so he paid the child no mind as he did other children who were enamoured by their village's visitor.

One late afternoon, the bard's last day in the village before he left for his next destination, the child still lingers even after all the other children had grown bored and returned home. The child holds scraps of cloth and lumps of charcoal with eyes alight with a boundless curiosity.

The bard smiles at the child while keeping his eyes on the mother afar. "What is it, little listener?"

"Tell me your stories again." the child says. "I want to write them down so I can remember them forever and ever!"

The bard blinks. This is the first time that he has had such a bold request, the first time that anyone ever wanted to remember him. "A village child knows how to read and write?"

The child shuffles. "No...I don't know words like the old general - but I can draw pictures! And the pictures will help me remember your stories!"

The bard smiles. "But how will you remember what those pictures mean one or two or three seasons from now?" he asks kindly, not cruelly. "Won't their meaning be lost?"

"Then I'll try my best to remember! I don't ever want to forget!" the child says defiantly.

The bard's smile widens even further. He has never met someone who showed so much enthusiasm. Maybe this might be another bard in the making and he'll have a whole village cursing him to the grave. "How about I teach you a way so that you will always have the stories with you - that even if you forget, a single glance will bring everything back word for word."

"Really mister?!" the child beamed. "Show me! Show me!"

"Well then, first may I know the name of my little pupil?"

"My name is Link!"

"That's a good name." A common name. A name that the bard has heard a thousand times before and will hear a thousand times again.

The bard sits back in the village square and pulls out a blank notebook along with a quill and a well of ink. Link stares at them with awe, such materials are as rare as gold in such a small village.

"I know many stories about many different Links." Old stories, more legendary history than fanciful tales like his others. He doesn't bother telling them most times but for this little Link, he will commit them to paper and ink. "As a parting gift to my little listener, let me tell you the stories of the legendary heroes..."

The bard didn't know how different this Link would be from the countless others he had encountered. He wouldn't know how indulging in their little request would resonate through the streams of time. He would never know how his final stories to the child would forever shape the course of the kingdom's history.

* * *

One sparse lesson isn't enough to teach an illiterate child how to fluently read and write but Link is completely enthralled by the stories. He commits each of the bard's words to memory and matches them to the words written down. Every night he reads until the tales of heroes passed become deeply ingrained into his mind.

The rancher hero who transformed into a wolf.

The child hero who stopped an evil king before he betrayed the kingdom.

The smithing hero who had a sword that could split himself into four.

The flying hero who lived in the sky in a time and defeated a god.

They are different from the bard's shorter stories, yes, but from the moment Link first hears them, they resonate even deeper than those initial tales could ever hope to do.

The bard had left many pages of the notebook blank with a sharp quill and a full inkwell. He had encouraged Link to try writing himself, to practice the letters and words to further cement his newfound skill. The bard had expected for ink to be wasted and the quill to blunt, the remaining pages filled with the mindless scribbles of a bored child - but Link is diligent and dedicated.

From what little words he knew, he crafts a new story to join the leagues of the others. Another heroic Link to grace the pages but for this hero, he gives many adventures.

The hero that Link writes is from a smithing family just like the smithing hero - but he lives with only his uncle who is secretly a knight. Link doesn't have any uncles but from the other uncles in the village he knows they are jovial and kind and full of more interesting things than mothers and fathers. His hero Link has a dream, just like the child hero, but in his dream the princess calls out for him directly. Then just like the rancher hero, his hero Link gets turned into an animal - but not a wolf though, because wolves are mean. No, his hero Link turns into a bunny because those are fast and fluffy and much friendlier than wolves.

Link writes about his hero until his ink runs dry and his pen goes blunt - but he still has pages to fill. He sharpens lumps of charcoal to a quill like point and continues writing.

Like the flying hero, his hero Link visits foreign lands but they lie across the sea instead of below the clouds. He makes up the lands of Holodrum and Labrynna for his hero Link to explore, much cooler names than The Surface. Then like before, his hero has to fight the evil Ganon - who this time starts and stays as an ugly pig demon because Link found Ganondorf the man boring.

Then, just as his hero Link was about to start his fourth adventure, Link runs out of pages in his notebook. He knows he has to find more.

* * *

In a solitary house just outside the main village lives an old man. He may not have as many years as other old people but the military has weathered him down to a man twice his physical age. He is a general but he feels like a cheater - raised up on the bodies of more deserving soldiers to reach the other side of the war.

He is the watchman of the village, not that there is much to watch out for in the middle of nowhere. All he has to do is send a report every month about how much nothing he sees. He is part of the village but not of the village. The villagers don't bother him and he doesn't bother them. He's perfectly fine with this arrangement - really, he is.

But reports mean paper and one day, he catches Link trying to break into his house.

The old general has no tolerance for little children and even less for little thieves.

He holds Link by the scruff of his tunic and like every other foolhardy boy his age, Link isn't the slightest bit repentant.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't send you home with a beating." the old general growls.

"Because the hero has to wake the Windfish!" Link cries.

"The what-?" The old general drops the boy at the absurdity of his words.

The boy holds out a notebook, overstuffed and dog eared and absolutely not the sort of thing that should be in possession of a simple village boy.

"Who did you steal that off?" The old general demands while mentally preparing a report for whatever disgruntled noble comes whining about theft.

"It's mine." Link insists. "It's the stories about heroes and I'm adding to them!"

The old general scoffs and snatches the book out of the boy's hand. This is a tiny village, one so small that it doesn't even have a name. There's no way this boy can read, let alone write.

He recognises the first four stories, the Crown's propaganda tales of heroes and glory used to lure foolish young men to the battlefield. The general doesn't believe in heroes. If the legends were true, then why didn't a Link rise up and end the last war as swiftly as he ended the demon king? Many foolhardy men had tried but all failed despite wearing green and being named Link. The hero was nothing but a farce.

But the fifth story caught the old general's eyes. Thick blocky yet legible letters proclaimed a hero unimaginatively called Link. A hero who struggled through trial after trial, battle after battle. Whose story didn't end at the defeat of the demon king but continued onward to more struggles and tribulations.

It's clearly written by a child, riddled with grammatical errors and simple sentences recycled from the previous takes but it has the old general completely enraptured.

He reaches the end and finds himself yearning for more. "The hero has to wake the Windfish." he finds himself muttering.

And Link, the boy, grins cheekily up at him. "See?"

With a grumble, the old general surrenders the paper. He wonders if he has found himself in a Windfish's dream as well.

* * *

The old general finds an odd companionship in the little village boy named Link. He provides the paper and Link creates the stories. Soon, he discovers that Link is as much an avid reader as he is a writer, devouring every piece of written word he can get his grubby little hands on whether it be trashy romance novels to dull military reports.

It amuses him to no end as the boy shuns sunshine to spend his days with a musty old man and even mustier old books. He finds himself flipping through those old books alongside Link, discovering a joy in even the driest of words with such an enthusiastic companion by his side.

But boys will be boys and of course Link would eventually be drawn to the combat manuals and battle techniques.

"Teach me how to fight like this." Link says one day, holding open a particularly dense book.

The old general is certain that the complexities completely fly over Link's head but he decides to humour the boy who has brought some much amusement to his dull life. He expects to spend the day wildly flailing around the sticks that have been deemed their 'swords' yet he watches Link carefully correct his stance and move with a clumsy grace as described in the book.

"You actually read it." The old general says incredulously.

Link huffs. "Of course I read it!"

And the old general can't help but laugh. He stops treating Link like a child at play but like one of the soldiers he once trained. He desperately hopes that he wouldn't have to bury Link like one as well.

* * *

But as the seasons come and go, so does peace. In far too short of a time, the tides of war return and men are demanded to fill its jaw.

There are always foolhardy youths who blindly waltz into battle for glory and honour but in this village too small to have a name, there is a disproportionate amount and it is all the fault of a young man named Link.

Like the bard had said, the memories of the stories he told had faded from memory but the ones that remained were those that were written down. Link is a productive member of the community, taking up his parents' craft and contributing to the greater whole, but every evening as the day draws to a close, people crowd the tavern to hear him tell his hero stories.

They are centuries old tales told by many passing bards but Link's silver tongue breathes a new life into them. They know about the hero who turned into a wolf but what if he was caught in a love triangle between two princesses? They know about the smithing hero that was divided into four but what if a part of him turned traitor? They know about the child hero who foresaw the future but what about his journey afterward? They know about the hero from the skies but what about his devotion to the woman who would become Hyrule's founder?

Link feeds these tales to the village crowd and they eat it out of the palm of his hand. Punctuated with elegant swordsmanship that rivalled knights from the capital, his stories enrapture his village in a way a travelling bard never could.

Maybe there was a reason that bards are relegated to travellers without a home. A home builds faith and trust and stories gain so much more weight from the mouth of someone familiar.

When the draft comes, every able-bodied young man immediately enlists. Link's tales of heroes and glory sugar-coated war in a way that the old general could never have imagined.

Link enlists as well because he is as enthralled by the stories he tells as his eager peers. He leads the hoard of young men, nearly half of the small village, on the march towards Castletown. On his lips and in his notebook overflowing with pages is a new story about another hero Link - a humble traveller from nowhere who started with nothing but a wooden shield yet in the end saved the kingdom from the demon king.

It spurs them forward, some to glory, many to death but all towards the disillusionment of war.

* * *

It is common to find young men dressed in green named Link at the castle gates claiming to be the next incarnation of the hero. With the tales of the heroes past so widespread and the name Link so popular, it is simply a natural consequence.

The standard procedure for dealing with a Link is to have them join the castle guard. One of them has to be the hero's spirit reincarnated and after waiting so many years, the best course of action is to keep all possible candidates close. The fact that it places more willing bodies between the royal family and invaders makes it all the more convenient.

Impa thinks nothing of the new Link at the castle gates trying to talk his way in. The two guards are also named Link, a particularly bitter pair that don't take to any new 'competition' to the hero title kindly. She is certain that none of those men are truly the goddess's chosen hero reborn.

She overhears the new Link's tale, rambling on about the young Hero of Time. Often Links would try to 'strengthen' their claim by tying themselves to a past hero. Normally it would be the Hero of Twilight or the Hero of the Sky. The Hero of Time is an odd choice.

But it is the twist to the old tale that catches Impa's ear.

"What if it wasn't a prophetic dream? What if that hero had come from the future?" the new Link says with a charming smile. "The royal patron Nayru is tied to time - what if the hero was sent back to stop a fate from ever occurring?"

She doesn't know what led the conversation down that route but it contains a truth that very few knew. The true nature of the Hero of Time's title is a secret carefully guarded. The knowledge to alter the flow of time itself has deadly consequences if left to roam wild.

For this Link to even suggest it, could it be...?

Impa intervenes and a new Link joins the many dozen of the castle guards. He has the same insufferable arrogance as his peers but she keeps an eye on this particular Link.

A part of her isn't a bit surprised when the Triforce shines.

* * *

Link's heart swells when he is gifted with green tunic and is named the Hero of Courage. Overnight, a rookie who has barely been there for a week is promoted high above the command of soldiers who had spent their lives training in the castle guard.

With each new warrior that joins the Hyrulean ranks from across the eras, Link's pride soars as their accounts match with the twists he added to the old tales. It is the small things, little details that would be forgotten over time yet Link is able to recall because he is The Hero. Even the hero he had fabricated turned out to be true. Why else would the songstress of dreams and the cowardly merchant he created for his stories be among the warriors he led if the hero's spirit didn't give him a glimpse of another time?

That weathered notebook filled with his stories of heroes is as much proof of his destiny as the mark on his hand.

Then when he obtains the Master Sword, Link knows he is invincible. Like in the stories, like the heroes before him, victory is in reach now that he has the legendary blade in hand. He will be the greatest hero of all time with a tale that will dwarf all his predecessors.

But maybe, that bard should have written down other stories rather than the legends of the heroes in the book he gave that young child.

There is a story about a boy with a coat of many colours whose boasting about his gift of prophecy led to his brothers turning against him. Maybe that would have prepared Link when his men betrayed him on Skyloft.

There is a story of a woman so beautiful that her face started a bloody war. Maybe that would have lessened the blow when Link discovered that the conflict was sparked by Cia's lust for the hero.

There is a story of a boy with makeshift wings of wax and feathers who, in his hubris, flew too close to the sun and crashed into the sea. Maybe that would have kept Link's pride in check before it manifested into shadows that overwhelmed him.

* * *

Link sits by the fire just barely alive. His body aches but that is nothing compared to the pathetic pool of wax his foolish pride has become.

Had his allies arrived just a moment later, there would have been nothing left to save.

The stories that once filled his head have now wrung him completely dry. The Hero of the Sky would have never let the Master Sword's power go to his head despite being the one who forged it. The Hero of the Four Sword would have never walked straight into a trap that left him completely vulnerable. The Hero of Twilight would have never lost to mere shadows no matter how numerous they were. The Hero of Time -

The Hero of Time, Young Link, leans against his side. He hugs Link tightly and he can feel the boy trembling through his grip, fearful of him slipping away again. There's no need for words between them. Link scared him with his recklessness. Link failed him.

Across the fire, Marin and Ravio watch him with worried eyes but now Link knows it's not him they see. They see their Link, the Hero of Legend who completed adventure after adventure without fail. He is nothing but a poor copy filled with hot air and empty words.

Ganondorf holds both Hyrule Castle and the entire Triforce.

Their numbers have been decimated by both death and turncoats.

All their forces have is a useless hero on a broken pedestal.

What can they do now with the odds stacked against them?

Something falls out of his tunic and into his hands. It's his notebook, falling apart at the seams and bursting with stories that did nothing but fill him with false hope. He is nothing like the heroes who came before him and he never will be. A part of him wants to hurl that damn book into the flames but his knuckles grip it so tightly that he is completely frozen in place.

Link looks up. The entire camp is huddled around the dying embers. The soldiers waver with weariness, not one of them is another man from his village - those poor inexperienced fools were some of the first to die. Link should have been among them if it weren't for that damn triangle that he lost. But they still all look at him. They still look up to him.

Useful or not, he is still the only hero they have.

He looks down at his notebook again. He opens his mouth.

The words gush out like a raging waterfall, spinning the tale of a hero of a world that the goddesses had given up on. A hero who wasn't chosen by fate or destiny but simply wanted to rescue his sister then return to a quiet life. The hero forced the goddesses to pay attention with his sheer willpower and brought Ganondorf down with a single strike.

Link doesn't know if that hero is real or if he is just nonsense that his desperate mind is spewing. But that doesn't change the waves of hope and life that run through the camp like a second wind.

If that hero is real, Link hopes that he would live long enough to meet him.

* * *

The war comes to an end.

They win - or rather, they didn't lose.

Ganondorf is once again sealed away and cynically, Link wonders how long it will be until he is once again free. He knows the stories, they are deeply engraved in his mind, heart and soul.

But the stories never say what the hero does after their adventure.

Link can't return to his home village. He was the one who filled his peers with the stories that lead to their deaths and now not a single one is still alive.

Link can't become a bard. He is too recognisable, and he lacks the wanderlust to go from village to village without a place to go home.

With no other choice, Link stays in Castletown.

The royal library has no shortage of books and so he indulges in his childhood love. He devours book after book until he needs glasses as thick as his shield to see even a metre in front of him.

Romance, horror, drama.

History, geography, physics.

He doesn't care about the contents as long as it provides a distraction from his reality.

No one bothers him. He has done his duty. There is no use for him.

But his self-destructive indulgence ends with a stack of blank paper in front of him, a quill in his hand and a well full of ink.

There is no epiphany or grand moment of realisation. Reading has always led to writing, so it is inevitable when he starts filling page after page with his messy scribbles. Even after all these years, his handwriting never improved beyond a child's scrawl.

He writes hero stories because that's all he knows how to write - but he pays careful attention to the little things, the small details that make the heroes more human than legend. Only so much can be remembered and the broad strokes of the bard tales focus solely on the grandness of the adventure. He writes about struggle and pain and hubris and folly in hopes that the next hero who reads them won't fall into the same trap he did.

* * *

...Of course, when the other heroes find out, they don't take too kindly to their lives being serialized as trashy romance novels.


End file.
